A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

All the machinery of intrigue at Rome was now in motion, and in 1684 three bishops who belonged to the rival French Congregation of Foreign Missions were sent out to make an investigation. When the Jesuits found it impossible to persuade these commissioners that the early Chinese had received a knowledge of the true God from the children of Noah, that the cult of ancestors was equivalent to the services in honour of the souls in purgatory, and so on, they used their court-influence ruthlessly against them and the missionaries. In the course of time, however, an adverse report reached Rome, and a serious inquiry opened. The ten Jesuits at the Chinese court wrote to say that the emperor himself endorsed their interpretation of the Chinese doctrines and rites, but, although the new Pope, Clement XI., was favourable to the Society, and Père la Chaise threw the influence of France into the scale, the testimony of the other missionaries was too plain to be ignored. An experienced missionary and able young prelate, Mgr. (later Cardinal) de Tournon, was sent out in 1703 to examine the Jesuit practices in India and China.

The adventurous voyage of Mgr. de Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, would fill an interesting volume. We shall see presently what the practices of the Jesuits were in India, and will not be surprised that he promptly condemned them. From that moment until he died heart-broken, six years afterwards, in a Christian jail, he was thwarted and tormented by the intrigues of the Jesuits. He reached Canton in the spring of 1705, and was informed that the emperor refused to see him. The position of the Jesuits at court was such that not even a child could fail to recognise their direction in this decision, and a great scandal was caused. It was twelve months before the legate was permitted to pay the Pope's respects to the emperor, and, as he politely insisted that the Jesuits were falsely representing the Church, he was driven from the country and committed to the care of the Portuguese authorities, who were controlled by the Jesuits. When he reached Macao, this papal legate found that the Viceroy of India, the Archbishop of Goa, and the Bishop of Macao forbade him to exercise his powers in any country under the Portuguese flag. When he justly replied by excommunicating the Bishop and Captain-General of Macao—and the Pope recognised the integrity of his conduct by making him cardinal in that year (1707)—the Portuguese authorities imprisoned him. He died in prison three years afterwards, at the early age of forty-two. The only priests in the east whom he had felt compelled to censure were the Jesuits, and the letters of de Tournon himself and of the priests of his suite (one of whom was imprisoned in a Jesuit house) emphatically attribute all the outrages they suffered to the Jesuits, who intercepted their correspondence in order to conceal the facts from the Papacy. It is even stated by some of these priests that the stubborn cardinal was eventually removed by poison.

Since we know that the Jesuits had paramount influence at Peking, Macao, and Goa, and could easily have secured a proper treatment of the Pope's representative, we are compelled to believe these witnesses. Crétineau-Joly's statement, that "they did not dare to intervene between the emperor and the legate," is little less than frivolous. They directed the whole proceedings—as usual, through others. De Tournon's assurance that, when a priest was tortured to give evidence against him at Peking, there were two Jesuits listening behind a curtain, is quite in harmony with their ways; about the same time in Paraguay, when a bishop was violently assaulted by the armed pupils of the Society, there were two Jesuits concealed in the trees directing them. We shall see that every prelate, in any part of the world, who sets out to expose the misdeeds of the Jesuits, experiences the same outrages as did the unfortunate Cardinal de Tournon.

The Jesuits both of India and China ignored the commands of the Pope's solemn representative, and clung to their lucrative missions. In 1706 they persuaded the emperor to forbid any missionary to attack Chinese rites, and, as the fierce controversy continued and the banishment of the more active prelates proved fruitless, they obtained an edict expelling all missionaries who followed the instructions of the late legate. The scandal was, however, now known throughout Christendom, and on 25th September 1710 Clement XI. solemnly condemned their practices. Again they quibbled, observing that some of their practices were not specifically condemned, and a new papal bull (Ex illa die) was issued on 19th March 1715, enacting that all missionaries must take oath to abandon the forbidden practices. The emperor denounced the bull, and imprisoned the prelate who communicated it to the Jesuits, and a third representative was sent to China by the Vatican. In spite of certain concessions (afterwards condemned by the Papacy), Mgr. Mezzabarba had little more success than his predecessors, and the Jesuits continued to maintain their compromises and tempt the Papacy with glowing promises of success. There were, they said, nine members of the royal family and hundreds of influential Chinamen ready to embrace Christianity as they expounded it. Innocent XIII., now fully informed by Mezzabarba, severely condemned them (1723), and we know from a private letter of the Jesuit historian Cordara that he was preparing an "atrocious decree" against the Society when he died in 1724.

As the immediate successors of Innocent XIII. were open to Jesuit influence, they were enabled to maintain their position and practices on the Asiatic missions until the middle of the eighteenth century. In other words, these religious who were especially bound to obey the Pope, defied the Papacy for nearly one hundred years (since the first condemnation), and committed every outrage against its representatives. In the meantime their great patron Kang Hi died (1722), and the exasperated Chinese began to destroy the conflicting missions. There were then, it is said, several hundred thousand Christians in China, though the sequel will show that these were almost entirely of the poorer classes, won by material services and ready to return to Taoism at the slightest pressure. The new emperor proscribed Christianity, and banished all the missionaries except the more learned of the Jesuits. A letter written by one of these Jesuits gives an account of their situation. As engineers, astronomers, and diplomatists they were still sheltered and rewarded by the Chinese court—he adds that they remained partly in the interest of French (and their own) commerce—but the educated Chinese disdained their religion, and they were reduced to a furtive ministration to the rapidly shrinking body of poor converts.

This situation lasted until 1743, when Benedict XIV. at last vindicated the dignity of the Papacy and issued his famous bull Ex quo singulari. A second and more drastic bull, sternly condemning their contumacy, appeared in 1744, and they were now forced to submit without reserve. From that time the Chinese mission melted away. As far as the Jesuits were concerned, it had never had any religious solidity. A few Jesuits who attempted to sustain the converts in the provinces were put to death, and the court Jesuits were restricted to their hydraulic engineering, surgery, philology, and astrology. They lingered for a generation at Peking, the strangest figures in the whole clerical universe, but the Chinese showed no sign of relenting, and they died, one by one, in their singular employments. Their death closed the stirring but sterile episode of the first attempt to Christianise China.

Before we turn to India, the next important centre of Christianity in the far east, we must glance at their fortunes in subsidiary missions. Their letters tell how they entered the Philippine Islands in 1665, and had a miraculous success among the very lowly, but generally peaceful, natives; one Jesuit is said to have baptized 50,000 of them (mostly children, apparently) in four years, and founded eight churches and three colleges. One priest to eight churches, and eight churches to 50,000 converts, give us the true measure of their success. They were generally content to pour the baptismal water over the heads of all who could be induced to accept it, by material benefits or a confused belief in its magical properties, and send the inflated statistics to Europe. In spite, however, of wars amongst the natives and occasional persecution they built up a prosperous mission. Its story is tainted by commercial activity and unprincipled behaviour towards the rest of the clergy. We shall see later that they had vast estates in California and Mexico, and from these they conducted a large and regular traffic, in their own ships, with Manila. Archbishop Pardo, of Manila, condemned this traffic, and ordered them to distribute the value of their property among the poor. He suffered the customary fate of prelates who interfered with the operations of the Society. Whether the governor of the Philippines was bribed, or merely persuaded by the fathers, we need not attempt to determine; but his officers seized the Archbishop during the night and deported him to a neighbouring island. Thirty years previously Pardo's predecessor, Archbishop Guerrero, had been treated with the same outrages.

In Cochin China, Tong King, and Siam the story of the Jesuits is much the same as in China, and need not be told in detail. A Father de Rhodes, a missionary of the early and ardent type, penetrates Cochin China in 1640, and in spite of resistance and persecution, makes 40,000 "converts" and builds seventy "churches" in a few years. Modern missionary experience in Asia enables us to test these absurd claims. Father de Rhodes was caught and expelled, and the next group of missionaries adopted the Chinese policy. They induced the King to regard them as great mathematicians and skilful engineers, and propagated a mild form of Christianity, as in China. This led to a similar, but even more virulent, conflict with the non-Jesuit missionaries. When the papal bull Ex illa die, condemning their practices, arrived, they airily remarked that it came from Amsterdam, not Rome, and ignored it. Very violent quarrels occurred with the French non-Jesuit priests, whom they denounced as "Jansenists"; and these priests accused them of the most sordid vice and outrage. We shall see that the charge of loose living must be admitted; but whether they poisoned hostile priests, and had refractory native women stripped to the waist and flogged, are questions which must remain open. The profane historian is naturally embarrassed when two groups of priests flatly accuse each other of lying, and one group certainly is lying.

At length the Vatican sent a bishop to investigate the situation in Cochin China, and we are, perhaps, justified in following the report of this impartial Papal Legate. He found great moral as well as theological laxity among the Jesuits. One father, in high authority, had had a concubine for twenty years, and took her with him when he visited the sick; and there was much drunkenness and violence against their opponents. The papal agents were bribed to support them, and the pagan officials were easily induced to admire and sustain the more genial ways of the Jesuits. The Legate officially forbade them to practise usury, to sell worthless drugs at exorbitant prices to the natives, to dress in gay purple and bind their flowing locks with coloured ribands, and so on. His decree is a flash of light on Jesuit practices among natives. One curious incident in his reports is worth noting. A Franciscan monk, a feeble old man of sixty, had, to please the Jesuits, established a church in face of that of the French missionaries. The Legate ordered him to remove, and the monk presently came to say that he was unable to remove as the Captain of the Guardians of the Royal Dogs (a young Jesuit "mathematician") had appointed him a Guardian and sent him several dogs, because the air of his district was good for dogs. In a word, the Jesuits used their full influence at court to thwart and persecute the Legate, and he died in distress shortly afterwards.

Siam had received two Jesuits in 1630. They came as envoys of the governor of the Philippines, and so charmed the King that they were invited to stay. When Spanish vessels followed them, the Siamese were indignant; but the quarrel was adjusted, and in 1685 six learned "mathematicians" of the great King Louis XIV. came, with gorgeous parade and an imposing military escort, to the Siamese court. The Jesuits were now everywhere diplomatic agents for the expansion of French commerce, if not French territory, and the work in Siam was facilitated by a French adventurer, named Phaulcon, who had won the King's confidence. The King asked for more "mathematicians," and fourteen Jesuits eagerly responded. But with them (in 1687) came a French squadron and several regiments, who proceeded to occupy and fortify positions in Bangkok and Merguy. The King soon detected that the learned mathematicians and the minister Phaulcon and the French regiments had a close and secret understanding, and this remarkable attempt to spread the gospel came to a premature close. Phaulcon lost his head, and the mathematicians were banished.